Watch the Throne
by TheyCallMeJub
Summary: A retired guard pony reflects on his past in this bizarre and provocative re-imagining of Canterlot and the Royal Guard.


_Prologue_

When I returned to the Canterlot Guardsmare Academy after having been away for decades, I was struck by the unshakable feeling that it hadn't changed in any way. Standing before the gate, an odd thought occurred to me. Perhaps, I mused, the buildings and the groves and the mountains to the east had blinked out existence the day I left, and had only just now returned, and only because I had returned. It was a selfish thought to have, believing that this dreamy place, with its gleaming spires and polished surfaces and powerful autonomy, somehow needed me to affirm its existence. The Academy was here long before I was, and like the goddesses of sun and moon who had created it, it seemed as though it might remain unchanged forever.

Everything was the same. Before me I saw the wide green sweep of grove that separated the front gate from the main instructional buildings, flanked on either side by the surrounding dormitories. Though I couldn't see it from where I stood, I remembered the gymnasium that squatted behind the instructional buildings, a hump of a structure compared to the campus's twin ivory towers. Beyond the gym lay the infamous "Proving Grounds," and beyond that lay the armory—and to east of the campus stood the high mountainside.

I pushed past the entrance gates and found myself oddly disappointed that I hadn't been accosted by wave after punishing wave of bittersweet nostalgia. During the train ride from Vanhoover, I had expected to be overtaken by emotion the moment I entered Canterlot, fearing the old sights and smells of the city might reduce me to a blubbering mass of reflective regret. But now I was past the campus gate and trotting across the neatly trimmed grove—my shadow vanishing then reappearing as I strolled beneath the shade of a fruitless tree—and still I remained untouched by the sway of nostalgia's power. The memory of colts lounging against tree trunks, their white coats sun-kissed and radiant with youthful juvenescence, stirred nothing in my chest. The sight of varnished wooden doors reminded me of long hours lost standing guard outside of museums, theaters, auction halls, ballrooms, and castle champers; the memories resurfaced in my mind but the feelings of frustration linked to them remained submerged, like restored pirate ships rising up to the surface without their treasures.

Perhaps age had shriveled the sting of those past days. Perhaps time had shrunk the giants of my youth that once ruled me so absolutely. The pains and the pleasures trapped in my memory of this place were tiny things now; or perhaps I had merely grown larger. After all, I was a husband now, a father of three beautiful children, a successful weather technician. I was my own pony now, whereas upon my arrival at this place I had been a young wayward soul, swept up and drowning in a sea faces that looked too much like my own.

Coming to the edge of the grove now, I faced the twin instructional buildings called the Eastern Common and the Western Common. The two buildings stood beside each other in perfect congruence, and looking at them now, they seemed comically tall, much to large and grand for the purpose they served. (But then everything in Canterlot was nonsensically enormous and showy). The Eastern Common, also known as the Pegasus Wing, housed all affairs concerning pegasus guards like myself; while the Western Common, the Unicorn Horn, was reserved for our spell-casting counterparts. Most everything concerning the races was kept separate here at the Academy. We were told this was done for practical reasons, though it's worth mentioning that relations between unicorns and pegasi within the guard had always been testy at best. The two groups were rarely openly hostile with each other but there was always tension beneath surface, bubbling and threatening to boil over. Of course, this sort of tension between races was completely normal in the capitol. If you were an earth pony or a pegasus living in Equestria and you weren't at odds with unicorns, it's likely because you weren't in Canterlot.

Nestled between the Commons was a paved alleyway leading to the gymnasium, and standing guard at this alley's entrance was a stone statue of the Guardsmares' founder: an earth pony mare adorned in crude armor, her breastplate emblazoned with the crest of House Canterlot. The story of the Founder was legendary, not in the sense that it was an epic tale of adventure, but in the sense that we guards were never sure if it actually happened.

To begin, the Founder's name can't found anywhere in recorded history. For generations historians have referred to her as The Founder, The Savior, or The Guardian, but in none of the ancient archives is she ever addressed by name. Virtually nothing is known about the Founder—not her birthplace, her cutie mark, nor her relationship to the royal family. All that is known for certain is that a short time after the founding of Equestria and the emergence of Celestia and Luna, the Founder perished attempting to protect the royal sisters from some great evil.

According to the legend, an unknown enemy attacked, weakened, and captured the princesses. The enemy was all but invincible and nopony dared challenge it. Nopony but the Founder. Fearless, she rallied a herd of her fellow earth ponies to rescue the alicorns. Though she and her entire tribe perished, she succeeded in freeing the alicorn sisters, and afterwards it was decided that some fighting force be established to protect the royal family should the need ever arise again. To honor the Founder's sacrifice, it was decreed that only unicorns and pegasi would serve in the Royal Guard, and that no earth pony be asked to suffer for the sake of House Canterlot ever again.

A noble story—but it was likely just as true that the Founder was a lie, a much-needed excuse for the Canterlot nobility to justify excluding earth ponies from royal affairs.

But whether her story was truth of fiction mattered little to the proud solider standing before me. She was a juggernaut carved of rock and dignity, and her fixed, stolid gaze seemed to challenge any who would claim otherwise.

Perhaps it was only because there was nopony around to see me, but I found myself saluting the old stony centurion, standing at attention as though before a superior officer. Though her stature told me she was too proud to admit it, she seemed lonely from having guarded her post for so long. And feeling remorseful, I wanted to order her to stand down. I wanted to take her spear and strip off her armor and hold her close to my chest and tell her that her country was safe, that her burden had been handed down and was no longer hers to carry. Her duty was done, and I longed to relieve the mare of her station, but I hadn't the authority nor the right to help her down from stone pedestal. So instead—my chin raised, my back straight, my front and hind legs parallel—I raised my a respectful left wing in recognition of my superior. Then, leaving the forever knight at her post, I cantered between the Commons. My pace quickened because traveling down that strange alleyway always unnerved me, and I wished to be through it as soon as possible.

The alley wasn't grim or frightening. It certainly possessed none of the haunting qualities of the Manehattan back alleys I'd read about as a colt, with their blood-freezing silence and general promise of danger and bodily harm. But still, there was something disquieting about that short walk between the walls. To be flanked by those walls was to be inside the Academy. Not inside one of the classrooms where I studied our nation's history, nor in the dorm that I shared with three other cadets, nor in gym or armory—but _in_ the Academy, specifically between her quavering thighs.

Let me elaborate: what I mean to say is that most everything about the Guardsmare Academy, and about Canterlot in general, smacked of barely concealed femininity. First, there was the name "Guardsmare," which was preposterous because in all the years I served the crown I never served alongside a single mare. Guarding was considered "stallion's work," and the name had stuck only because the supposed Founder was a mare. This tacking-on of the suffix "mare" was customary in Canterlot, something I, being from Cloudsdale, was unaware of before coming to capitol. In Canterlot police were _policemares_ and firefighters were _firemares_. Terms like _handymare_ and _renaissance mare_ were rampant in the vocabulary and seemed to serve no purpose beyond uplifting the grandness of the ruling matriarchs. The tyranny of the feminine was always hanging about the city like toxic vapors, sometimes thin and nearly invisible, sometimes thick like a dragon's snort, but always floating overhead, seeping in through ones pores and filling ones heart and mind with poison.

Ironically, though, despite the aggressively feminine world that trapped my fellow guards and I, Canterlot was a city of erections. In a passage of the widely read and controversial book, _My Kingdom for a Horse: The Social, Political, and Economic Decline of Unicorn Culture_, renowned zebra scholar Langston Hooves referees to Equestria's capitol city as "The Shimmering Phallus." He demonized Canterlot's spiraling towers, claiming them to be, "a testament to Equestria's growing obsession with wealth, power, and its own greatness, as well as a clear and literal illustration of the nation's collective sexual anxiety."

The book was required reading for all Academy cadets, in what I imagined was some perverse attempt to diversify course work. While it was argued that Langston's views were heavily biased (this was very likely given the always-shaky relationship between ponies and zebras), I could never bring myself to deny any of the social ills brought to light by his thoughtful prose. I knew all too well of the power of this sexual anxiety. And I knew that it was at its strongest here: between the Pegasus Wing and the Unicorn Horn.

The buildings were so close that little daylight found its way into the passage, except at noon when the sun was directly overhead. Usually the corridor was darkened by shadows—as it was now—and I remember that in spring the simple alley would transform into a slick feminine canal. During the warm showers typical of the season, the heat and moister coating the walls always gave me the forbidding sense that I was caught between the thighs of some goddess of creation. And on the mornings punctuated by these lazy drizzles, I would often press my hoof against the damp walls and think of Celestia or Luna or my mother… But now I am getting ahead of myself, peaking at later chapters when the story has only just begun.

With the Academy's marehood behind me, I stepped back out into the bright, bee-humming day and trotted by the gymnasium. Peering in through the windows, I was surprised at first to see it full of glowing horns and beating wings. But then I remembered that though there was no academic instruction during the winter season, athletics were kept up year round.

I passed the gym and cantered hastily across the infamous Proving Grounds. Bitter memories slept beneath this treeless field, and I did not wish to wake them by lingering for too long.

When I came to the edge of the Proving Grounds, I chanced a backwards glance over my shoulder, a feat that took a great deal more courage than it should have. For the second time in my life the campus was behind me, and from this back-to-front perspective it had the look and feel of some ancient and bizarre, bloodless, battlefield. A war had been waged here. A mad struggle of hearts and minds and wills—and somehow I had emerged from brutality in one piece, irrevocably scathed but stronger for having endured.

…But I am getting ahead of myself again. The entire campus was not behind me yet. There was still the armory.

The armory was a short but long building, a tail protruding from the campus's back. Remembering that it was never locked during the day, I pushed open the sturdy wooden double-doors and instantly my nose was accosted by the aggressive scent of polishes and cleaners. The armory possessed the same degree of waxed sterility that was trademark of every closed space in Canterlot. Though the room was full of swords and spears, their blades were so well-kept and their handles so polished that there seemed nothing lethal about them. There was no danger in them; they looked more like decorative ornaments than tools made for slashing or stabbing.

Feeling anxious at the prospect of being caught trespassing, I beat my wings and hovered into the chamber, gradually drifting upward as neared the back wall. The armory was one long corridor. It was massive but well-organized, which made finding things easy. Blades and other offensive weapons were located near the front and to the left. Bludgeons, clubs, and other blunt weapons (which were seldom ever used) were on the same side but closer to the end of the corridor. On the right were the defensive armaments—and suspended from wooden pegs that jutted from the back wall, I found what I was looking for. The helmets.

Nearing the back wall, my eyes fell on one helmet in particular that didn't shine like the others. Its electric blue crest was dull and as I plucked it from its peg to, I noticed the odd mislaid bristle here and there. Only a few hairs were out-of-place, but it seemed dramatically rebellious hanging there amid the perfection the other crests.

Running my hoof over the helmet's surface, I was elated to find a single dent, a tiny, mischievous imprint mocking the otherwise faultless golden exterior.

Yes, I thought to myself, surely this is his helmet.

I'd traveled all this way from Vanhoover hoping I might see it again, but I never imagined it would still be here. Or rather, I did imagine but didn't truly believe. I'd wished for it in that vague way ponies wish to be rich or famous, holding out hope but never truly expecting anything to come of it.

I looked down at my refection in the helmet's surface, and was awestruck. The dullness beleaguering its golden finish, the frayed hairs harassing its crest, the dent mocking its exterior—these bothersome flaws were its weapons, and with them it seemed intent on murdering the perfection of the entire Guardsmare Academy. Staring down at the hunk of gold, I felt its desire to pester the varnish from the wooden doors. To annoy the paint off the walls.

This was his helmet, all right. This was Storm Chaser's helmet. I peered down at the impression he had left in it, and couldn't decide if it was greater or smaller than the one he had left in me.


End file.
